Friday, November 28, 2014

I find this article worth sharing not just because it features Led Zeppelin, but also because it mentions Jimmy Page’s reputation as a guitar genius. His guitar solo “Heartbreaker” truly represents the stroke of a genius.

There's a pre-concert vibe outside the Ace Hotel theater in downtown
Los Angeles, people spilling off the sidewalk into the street as they
wait for the doors to open. Once inside, they jam the bar and try to be
heard above the din.

It's a rock 'n' roll crowd, except there's no
band on the card tonight. The draw: a 70-year-old Englishman talking
about his new collection of photographs.

Jimmy Page, mastermind of Led Zeppelin, is on a book tour.

Trim
as ever, he gets a standing ovation when he comes on stage, elegant in
black with his silver hair neatly fixed in a short ponytail. Over the
next 90 minutes, the audience hangs on every word as Chris Cornell, the
frontman for Zeppelin-evoking Seattle band Soundgarden, projects images
from the guitarist's new photo-autobiography, "Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page"
(Genesis Publications), on an overhead screen and asks the guitarist
for the stories behind the pictures.

There's Page as a choirboy, Page as a session guitarist, Page
prowling the world's concert stages with Led Zeppelin, the dominant band
of the 1970s and the No. 2 bestselling group of all time after the
Beatles. If hard rock had a logo, Page would have a strong claim to be
its icon with his mane of black hair, his rail-thin frame and his
road-beaten Gibson Les Paul hanging almost to his knees.

Still,
Led Zeppelin disbanded 34 years ago after the death of drummer John
Bonham, and there has been just a handful of partial reunions since. How
then to account for the 1,400 people at the Ace, who have paid $100 or
$150 simply to hear its former guitarist talk?

Or how to account
for Led Zeppelin cracking the Billboard Top 10 four times — this year —
with rereleases of its first four albums, remastered by Page and
augmented with alternate takes and mixes?
For the answers, start with the songs.

For the answers, start with the songs.

"The music is memorable. It's hook heavy. Unlike so many other bands,
these songs stand the test of time," says Bill Sagan, who runs
Wolfgang's Vault, an online retailer of rock memorabilia.

Sagan
isn't a rock critic (many of whom never cared much for Zeppelin anyway),
but as a merchant, he knows something about the band's wide and
enduring appeal. In the male-dominated world of hard rock, about 40% of
the Led Zep T-shirts he sells are for women. He sells a lot of smaller
men's sizes too, suggesting that teens and young adults are the buyers.

T-shirts are worn to make a statement, he said, and young people looking to project an outlaw image get that with Led Zeppelin.

"When you think of hedonism, you think of Led Zeppelin," Sagan said. "They had this edge."

The band's road antics are, indeed, the stuff of legend. The 1985
bestseller "Hammer of the Gods" by Stephen Davis is a saga of trashed
hotel rooms, groupies and controlled substances. Although much of the
book has been disputed by band members and others, it no doubt
contributed to the group's notoriety.

There are few glimpses of
that in Page's book, aside from one image of him chugging from a bottle
of Jack Daniels backstage at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis in
1975.

"Maybe the photographers couldn't keep up the pace," Page says with a smile, sitting down to talk one morning last week.

Page
said a book of photos appealed to him more than written memoirs, the
route taken by Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Neil Young and others.

"If
there were autobiographies of my contemporaries, I would always have a
look to see what photographs were in there," he said. "I'd go straight
to the photos. And I think a lot of people are like that.

"I have
been approached to do a written book, and I like the idea, but it's
probably something to release posthumously," he said, his voice turning
serious for a moment.

"I want to be able to say everything. Everything."

Until then, there is the photo book. To support it, Page has done
appearances in Paris, London, Tokyo and New York, where artist Jeff
Koons interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y.

His book is 512 pages
of sweets for Zeppelin fans. The 1970s glory days are there, as is Page
playing "Whole Lotta Love" at the 2008 Summer Olympics closing ceremony
in Beijing.

Los Angeles is also well represented. There's a young
Page playing the Casino ballroom on Catalina with the Yardbirds in 1966,
and epic scenes at Inglewood's Forum. (Cornell showed one at the Ace
event. "You can see it's full," Page pointed out, to hearty applause.)

"We
had lots of friends here, and there were lots of other musicians here,"
Page said earlier in the day. "And there are good music shops for
instruments. There's a guitar shop here called McCabe's [in Santa
Monica]. I went to McCabe's at the time I came over here the first time
in '65."

It's
hard to talk about Page without talking about guitars. Rolling Stone
ranks him No. 3 on its list of greatest players, after Jimi Hendrix and
Eric Clapton. Yet it was his skill as a songwriter and producer that
seals his place in rock history, said Brad Tolinski, editor of Guitar
World magazine and author of "Light & Shade," a collection of
interviews with Page.

"He really is the architect of modern
music," Tolinski said. "His bit of genius wasn't just as a guitarist —
it was how he recorded John Bonham's drums, and where he put John Bonham
in the mix.

"If you go back to the '60s, and listen to where the
drums and bass were in the mix, they were sub[servient] to the vocals,"
he said. "Jimmy pushed the drums way up front, with the guitar and the
vocals. What do you hear now on the radio? Why do you think hip-hop
sampled Zeppelin early on? It was a profound shift in popular
recording."

So,
what about a reunion? Page quickly dismissed reports last week (since
discredited) that the band had been offered $800 million to reunite by
Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson. "I never saw a contract," he
said.

Led Zeppelin hasn't played since a one-off 2007 tribute
concert for music executive Ahmet Ertegün in London, and singer Robert
Plant, after winning multiple Grammys for an album with singer Alison
Krauss in 2009, is touring with new songs and a new band.

"We're talking seven years later, and there hasn't been any sort of will, if you like, to do that," Page said of a reunion.

The
band's reissued albums, being released by Warner Music's Atlantic
label, will have to do for now. But why does Page see a need to hear
subtly different versions of the same, decades-old songs?

"It
presents more information to people about what was going on at the time
of the recordings," Page said. "I was in the studio more often than the
others because I was producing the band, so I had far more points of
reference that were needed to make this project seriously play. For the
recording history of Led Zeppelin, it was my thing to do. For the fans,
it gives them more information."

Some
of the alternate takes are stripped-down versions reminiscent of how
the band played live, without backing musicians to play the extra
guitars and other instruments added in the studio. He pointed to a new
cut of the blues number "Since I've Been Loving You."

"What you
hear is just the four of us going at it," he said. "It's fantastic, the
energy. It will make your hair stand on end. This is the whole point of
having these things out."

Asked to name his favorite Zeppelin songs, Page demurs. He cites
"Achilles Last Stand" as a "guitar epic" and says "Tea for One" features
some of his best playing as a lead guitarist.

But favorites? Some songs were more successful than others, he concedes, but that doesn't make them favorites.

"The
Led Zeppelin legacy is that everything that was recorded was recorded
for a purpose," he said. "All of the songs are very different to each
other, and that's undisputed. The motivation behind each track, and the
memories behind each track, and the reasoning, and the atmosphere, are
very different."

Still, with his book and reissue project now mostly finished, Page says he's ready to focus once again on making music.

"I've
had quite a lot of material under my belt that I haven't recorded,
because I wanted to be really sure that I could really put the blinkers
on and really focus on it," he said. "I think I'll come back here next
year doing my own [music]. I'd be showcasing things from the past, which
people know me more, and also I've got new music that I'm really,
really keen to present. And there would be some surprises."

At the
end of his L.A. swing, Page was feted with a dinner at the Sunset
Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. Ringo Starr was there, along with four
of the biggest names in rock guitar — Kirk Hammett of Metallica, ZZ
Top's Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh of the Eagles and Joe Perry of Aerosmith.

"The
best thing I can say is thanks — thanks for being a ... genius," Perry
said. "He raised the bar on our kind of guitar playing, and our kind of
rock 'n' roll, and I don't think anyone's touched him."

I really do have a lot of love for Led Zeppelin, particularly for Jimmy Page. I frequently listen to his guitar solos, along with the songs of Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, and Steve Vai—the other legends who earned their spot in my very own Brent Morgan Waco hall of fame. Connect with me through Facebook to know what songs you really should listen to right now.

About Me

I’m Brent Morgan Waco, physical therapist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Though work occupies most of my time, I find time to relax and listen to my favorite punk rock bands from the ‘80s or old school hip hop royalties, like Run DMC and The Beastie Boys. But nothing gets me going than Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Led Zeppelin.
When I am not listening to my favorite artists, you can find me watching again my all-time favorite film “High Fidelity,” or enjoying the latest “Game of Thrones” episode. Getting fit is an important part of my daily routine, and I’m either at the studio doing yoga or outdoors for some parkour workout.